Imagine it…….believe you can create it……

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Hello my little blog family…..two posts in one week??!! Just in case you’re wondering, no, I did not make a New Year’s Resolution to keep up with regular posting (although I’d like to find a way to become more consistant….lol). I have my mom here visiting and we’ve been on a card creating binge right now and I’m just having so much fun!! I have a few cards done and will try to post each one of them over the next few days…..we’ll see how that works out…..lol.

You’ve seen me talk about the gals over on Splitcoaststampers every now and again. Well, one of the ladies has started a new challenge thread called You Can Do It!! This challenge will be hosted by anyone joining the group that wants to host and has an idea for a technique, card sketch, color combo, embellishment idea……etc. The person hosting for the week will give the group a challenge and we can either participate or not each week and make a card according to the challenge she put out there. You can even go back to previous challenges and do them if you want instead of the challenge for that week. We’re a pretty laid back group and have a ton of fun!! The very first challenge was to make a card using a hand-made flower of any kind. And this flower didn’t have to be hand-made by yourself, it could be one that someone else made for you too!! I ended up doing two cards for this challenge.

Check out that beautiful crochet flower!! My mom crochet it for me…..did three different flowers so I decided to stack them to make one gorgeous full flower!! I attached them all together with a brad from the Stampin’ Up! set of Antique brads and just love it. She also showed me how to do the double embossing technique on one card front…..very cool. I love my newest embossing folder from Stampin’ Up! called Fancy Fan Folder. It’s the one on the top of the card. I’d love to find a die cut with that pattern on it. And how about that lace…..OMGosh!! I got it through a Facebook Destash your Stash site where people go on and create an album with all the supplies they want to purge out of their craft space or in some instances, stores, and are given a date and a one hour time slot to sell their stuff! I just love this lace and got it for a song! My Congratulations sentiment stamp is from one of my favorite sets from Hot Off the Press called Tiny Words & Images onto one of my tags from my Spellbinders Fancy Tags set.

I’m going to get her to teach me how to make these before she goes home so I can pump some of these babies out too. 🙂 I don’t know that I’d ever try to duplicate the lace though.

The second card I made I used one of my favorite Cricut cartridges from Close To My Heart called Art Philosophy. It has about 6 different rolled flower die cuts to choose from and I love making these flowers!! I also used my new Memory Box Elegant Scrollwork die cut I got from my mom for Christmas. I’ve been wanting that die cut for a while now and just love using it! I use 4 of them on this card. I took two of them and flipped one over and then attached the ‘bottom’ of them together to make the sort of fan shape with them. I did the same thing again and just turned it upside down too to mirror the top one. Clever now, aren’t I??!!! 🙂

All I can say is thank goodness for glue pens cause that’s a very narrow die cut!!! The leaves were punched out using my pocket leaf punch from Creative Memories. The sentiment is a Hampton Arts stamp from the $1.50 bin at Michael’s. I love those rolled flowers and this is the first time I used patterned paper to cut them out and I really like them! Here’s a close-up of the beauties….

That’s it for today. I’m off to go play some more with mom. Later ladies!!

Hello my little blog family!! I have another card to share with you that I made for the alphabet challenge over on Splitcoaststampers. Each week our lovely host picks a new letter from the alphabet and we have to come up with a card with something on it that starts with that letter. It’s alot of fun and quite challenging some weeks!! This is what I came up with for the letter F.

This card is really growing on me! I just love this stamped image by Hero Arts. It was stamped onto a piece of kraft cardstock that was torn and then inked with my Tim Holtz Vintage Photo and then just the very edge was inked with the Walnut Stain to give it an almost burned look to it. I stamped a second bird and fussy cut him out and pop dotted him up to add some dimension. I colored him in by sponging on some Tim Holtz Distress Ink in. Scattered Straw and some Fired Brick and Dried Marigold mixed. I added a couple of small feathers to him for wings and also added a real branch off of one of my fir trees in the back yard. I love the look of it on the card!! I used my Martha Stewart leaf stamp for the leaves and colored them in with my Fired Brick and Dried Marigold as well. I added a I Am Roses cherry blossom that I inked the edges with by using more of my Tim Holtz Distress ink in the Fired Brick. I added a few sentiments and it’s complete!

I added some Close To My Heart liquid glass to the First Class and Friendship sentiments to give them some added ‘pop’ off the page! And here’s my cute little bird…..

Hey there my blogging family! I was at our cabin for a few days last week and decided it was time to make some cards again…..I had a blast!! One of these days I’ll figure out how to do the delayed blog post thingy so a new post comes up every day or so……but ya, that’s not going to happen today, so I’ll just put them all into one post…..lol. The paper and most of the embellishments used on these cards were all purchased from Leanne’s store called Scrapn’ With Flair…..check it out….she has great prices!!

Have I mentioned how much I love my I Am Roses roses??? I really like how this card turned out and love the shabbiness of it (is that even a word?? lol). I used papers from the BoBunny Country Garden line and the Weathered design. I love this paper line and had such a hard time cutting into it!!! It’s so crazy, but I feel like I have this hoarding vault full of all my favorite stuff and I never want to use it…..soooo silly!!. I used a strip off both sides of the paper for this card and covered the seam with a piece of lace I found at our local Thrift Store…….I LOVE that store!! I’ve got so much stuff from there for just a few dollars, it’s crazy!!. I distressed the edges with my Tim Holtz distress tool and then inked the edges with my Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Weathered Wood…..one of my favorite inks. I attached a butterfly from a package from Close To My Heart and then grabbed my Gesso and randomly applied some to give the card an old weathered look. It doesn’t show in the picture, but I applied some of my Close To My Heart Liquid Glass to the two colored butterflies on the paper……I really love how that stuff just adds to the dimension on a card!

So…….how ’bout this one…..very mixed media…..I really like it. It’s not for everyone, but I’m really having fun with the whole mixed media world lately. For this card I started with a Kraft cardstock base and then layered on paper from the BoBunny Timepiece line and the Country Garden line. I tore the layers and then distressed the edges with my fingernail and inked them with my Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Vintage Photo…..another one of my go-to favorites! I used my Stampin’ Up! Scallop Trim Border punch, some burlap pieces and some jute twine. The butterfly is from the 12 x 12 Chipboard add-on to the BoBunny Country Garden line and it has a bunch of very cute elements to be used! I took my texture paste and randomly smeared it over the card and burlap and then added a bit of white Gesso to the top of it to give it more of a white look. Once I was all done with the card I grabbed my Tsukineko Goosebumps Clear Texture Spray and gave the whole front of the card a spritz with it……it leaves a very cool raised texture to the card front once dry. Along the left side of the card there is also half a doily pasted on that’s been spritzed with some of my Lindy’s Stamp Gang Flat Fabios (sooooo love these spritz’s!!!) in Caribbean Blue, Luscious Lime and Mango Mania.

This is more of a traditional card I made for the Alphabet Challenge on SCS. The letter for this week was C. I used the BoBunny Timepiece paper and then took my stamps from a new set made by “darkroom door” called Tick Tock. I stamped all three clocks onto cardstock using my Rich Cocoa Memento Ink, distressed the edges with my Tim Holtz distress tool and inking the edges with my Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Vintage Photo. I also inked the entire edge of the card base with the Vintage Photo as well. I added some of my Close To My Heart Liquid Glass to the edges of two of the clocks and to the swirls on the card front. The sentiment is also from the same stamp set and the silver butterfly was from my stash as were the brown flat-back pearls.

This is the last card I made…..

The butterflies were stamped onto a piece of paper towel and then spritzed with my Lindy’s Stamp Gang Flat Fabios in Caribbean Blue, Luscious Lime and Mango Mania. I also took the other half of the doily I’d already spritzed and used it on the side of this card. I added some lace that I died using the spritz’s and a lace bow. I took my texture past and smeared quite a bit of it on the front of the card and then spritzed it as well. I added some stickles to the wings of the butterflies and then traced around them with my white pen to make them pop. I distressed the edges of the card with my Distress Tool and then inked them with some Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Broken China. I added three I Am Roses roses to the front. These three roses were already inked with the black on the edges of the petals, so I took my spritz’s in the Caribbean Blue and the Mango Mania and gave them a couple of sprays to tie them into the card better.

That’s it for my very long post…….if you’ve stuck around this far, thank you!!! As always I love to read your comments/feedback. I’m off the see what else strikes my fancy……till next time!

Hello to my blogging friends! I have a couple of cards to show you using a technique that may or may not actually be a technique…..lol. A few months ago we had the fabulous Leanne from Scrap ‘n With Flair in Humboldt for a one day, 12 hour Scrap and Yap day. I wasn’t able to make it to the Scrap and Yap, but I knew that Leanne would be there with her products from her on-line store and I just had to go and play for just a little while and do some shopping!!! This is where I first saw the Lindy’s Stamp Gang products and they are fantastic!! If you don’t know what they are you have to check them out in Leanne’s store. You’ll see some of them in future projects I’ll be posting…..the colors are incredible!! This is also where I first saw “I Am Roses” flowers and went home with a nice little bundle of those too……you’ll see these little gems on my card today. One of the other products I purchased was some Claudine Hellmuth Studio multi-medium matte. I love the look of the mixed media projects out there and I really want to try to do some of it myself one of these days……just have to get the nerve up to actually try it!! I did however use my multi-medium matte on these two cards I made using this!

So this is a paper napkin I found while shopping and fell in love with the colors!! When I brought them home I thought……Oooooo……what nice cards they’d make!! So yup! I peeled them apart and started to tear and glue to make some cards!

For this card I tore out just the coffee mug and adheared it to a kraft card front. What I used to attach it was my Studio multi-medium matte. It’s really a cool product. I just took a brush and ‘painted’ some of the matte onto the card from and placed my torn piece of the paper napkin on top and then painted over top of the napkin with the matte as well. I took my heat tool and used it to dry the medium (as I’m WAY too impatient to wait till it dries overnight). I took some narrow cream-colored lace and sprayed it with my Lindy’s Stamp Gang Moon Shadow Mist in Burnished Brass and also gave my card from a bit of a spritz as well. I dried my lace with my heat tool and attached it to the side of the card. I then took my Ranger Distress Ink in Black Soot and Rusty Hinge and stamped some random background stamps onto the card from using my Tim Holtz Ultimate Grunge background stamp set. I used the dots and the grid pattern stamps on this card. This is such a fun set and has funky stamps with a dots pattern, a grid pattern, a crackled glass pattern, random date stamps pattern a checkerboard pattern, bricks pattern and a numbers pattern. All of these stamps are a sort of distressed, grungy type of pattern and I love them!! Notice the fabulous pop of color from the three little roses on the corner of the card……I love these little flowers!! They’re from the I Am Roses line and are just so stinkin’ cute!! I distressed the edges of the card, added some bling and it’s done!

I took a look at the napkin again and wanted to incorporate more of the pattern from it and decided to cover the entire front of my next card with it. Check it out!

I really like how this card turned out. I used my multi-medium matte on it again and this time I painted it on quite thick and chunky to add some additional dimension to the card. I spritzed the front of the card and my white paper doily with my same Lindy’s Moon Shadow Mist in the Burnished Brass. I attached the doily to the corner of the card and then grabbed my Tim Holtz Ultimate Grunge background stamps again with my Distress Black Soot ink and stamped randomly with the dots pattern and the multi date stamp pattern. I had some paper butterflies from Close To My Heart that I also spritzed with my Moon Shadow Mist and then added some stickles to the edges of the wings and some bling down the body. I took a piece of rusty-brown cardstock and stamped my sentiment onto it, tore the edges and then inked them with my Black Soot. I attached it to the card using my multi-medium matte to give it the same texture and dimension as the rest of the card. I attached a dangly bling piece from my stash, distressed the edges of the card and tore away at a couple of the corners and it was done!!

So, this was the result of playing with my new product and a paper napkin……let me know what you think!! You know I love to hear from you!!

Hello once again!! Here is another Mother’s Day card I made…..this one was snatched up pretty quickly at work when I took it there to show the girls…..it never made it past the first girl!! I REALLY love this die cut from Memory Box called Sefafina Heart …. just check it out!!

Isn’t it just so delicate and lovely?!!! I added some bling to it just for those special mother’s. My card base is some DP I’ve had in my stash for so long and I have no idea where or when I picked it up. I think it makes for a very nice contrast for a background.

My Mother’s Day sentiment is from my Close To My Heart sentiment set called “A Little Everything” which you’ve seen me use before. That love lacey border is the Martha Stewart Elegant Lace punch.

So, there it is…..very pink…..very feminine. I actually did another one but went with a brown and orange sort of combo…..that one was grabbed right away too and I had intended to add bling to it too…..didn’t get a chance!! lol. Here’s what that one looked like……same layout (only reversed), just different color combo and I used my Stampin’ Up! Scallop Trim Border punch:

Now, what card to post next?? Are you getting tired of your emails filling up yet if you’re a subscriber…..lol.

Hello Blog pals…..here I am again!! I have a group of girls I work with that purchase my cards on an ongoing basis. I have this little box at work where Ijust put a bunch of cards in with an envelope for them to pay me on the honor system for any cards they take. I decided I’d better start getting some Father’s Day cards in that box soon, so here’s a card I made up when I got some inspiration from one of my card making magazines.

I really like the masculine feel of this card. Another layout I saw in one of my cardmaking magazines…..lol. I love the layers on this card and I even pulled my sewing machine out for this card. I made a little brown paper bag (out of a big brown paper bag….original, huh….lol) to hold a tag that has a cute little sentiment on it. The piece of ruled paper I tore out of a journal book I have. It didn’t have the red margin lines on it so I added those. I also didn’t like the stark look of the white paper so I used my Tim Holtz blending tool and Distress Ink in Antique Linen to soften it a bit.

Here’s a peek at the tag I put into my paper bag. It says “You are some kind of wonderful”. Kind of fitting for Father’s Day I thought!! lol The measuring tape is from my Stampin’ Up! Totally Tools set and that stamp actually has the words ‘love beyond measure’ under the tape measure. For this card I only wanted the tape measure so just didn’t ink up that part of the stamp. The Happy Father’s Day is from one of my Close To My Heart sentiment sets called ‘A Little of Everything’. It’s a very versatile and I use it quite often.

Check it out in full size. I kinda like this one. Check out my ‘screw’ brads…..cute…..oopps…..I mean, manly, aren’t they!

Thanks so much for coming on by. I hope I stirred your imagination just a little to go and get creating in your craft space!!

Hey there my bog friends! I have sooo many good things going on in my life right now,…….holy cow!! The most important right now is I have Grandchild #4 due any day now!! I’m super pumped to meet the precious little bundle I can’t even tell you!!

I was playing around with some of my stock pile of embossed cardstock and came across a card in one of my cardmaking magazine that sent me in this direction. It’s just a tiny card measuring in at 4 x 4, but I think packs a bit of a punch for it’s size!

I really like the pop of color the teal brings to the card! And I have a confession to make…..I’ve had this Baker’s Twine forever, and this is the very first strip of it I’ve ever used……geesh! Seriously?? lol.

‘Thanks So Much’ sentiment came from my Fiskars ‘So Much Thanks’ stamp set. I really like how this little card turned out.

Check out the beautiful painted box in behind my card. My very talented Mother painted that quite a few years ago and I absolutely love it.

Thanks so much for stopping by again for a peak…..I hope to see you soon!!

Hello my blog friends…..I have NOT fallen off the face of the earth….really!! I figured I’d better come on and post a few cards before you all thought I’d forgotten about my blog. I haven’t!! Life has just been crazy busy lately.

Soooo, I was sitting at my computer last night and thinking about the new Grand Madison Window die from Memory Box my mom got. I had spent some time cutting out a bunch of die cuts for her this weekend in a few different colors……I think she’ll have enough window die cuts to last her for a while now. lol!! I was trying to think of an idea to make a card using one of the window dies and thought, I want to try to make one from the perspective of being on the inside looking out. My little brain went into overdrive and I was off!! I think it turned out pretty darn good!! Check this out!!

Isn’t this cool?! I took a piece of white cardstock and cut it down so it would fit into the inside of the window die. I stamped it with one of the stamps in my Stampin’ Up! Lovely As A Tree set. (I love that stamp set by the way…..lol) Then I took my Tim Holtz Forest Moss Distress ink pad and a Q-Tip and ‘dotted’ on my leaves for the trees using the tip of the Q-Tip. I also highlighted the stamped areas of the grass and then took the flat side of the Q-Tip and lightly ‘colored’ in the grass with my Tim Holtz Peeled Paint Distress ink pad. I tore a piece of paper into a rough oval shape and then used my Tim Holtz Broken China Distress ink pad and a sponge to ‘color’ in my sky. I used the torn piece of paper as a mask and created a couple of clouds…..which you can’t see now because I decided my window needed curtains…..sigh. Oh well….you’ll have to just trust me that there are a couple of really cute clouds in behind those lace curtains!!! The flowers that are in the ‘window box’ on the outside of the window were made using my Memory Box Catalina Border die cut. I had a yellow die cut sitting on my table, so I cut it up and inked the flowers and leaves using a Q-Tip and my Tim Holtz Distress inks. I pop dotted the window die onto the front and taa daa!!!

I tried to pick out a patterned paper that would look like wall paper and covered the front of my card with that and then just built my card on the front of it. The “Be You” sentiment is stamped from my ‘Chairs To You’ set from Close To My Heart.

This card took me forever to put together it seemed. I put it together while I was Skyping with my dear friend from Alberta. Ya gotta love being able to sit and create while spending time with a good friend as well…..it doesn’t get much better than that!!!

I’m off for the night now…..I have sooo many cards to catch up on and get posted it isn’t funny….really…..it isn’t!!! Maybe this weekend?? lol. Thanks so much for dropping in to take a peek. I do appreciate it and love it when you leave comments!!

Hello my long lost blogging family!!! Wow….what the heck happened over that last few days?? I think I’ll have to go on a mission and find the person that has stole my life…..I want it back right now!!! Okay, done ranting…..lol. Sooooo, I was able to get together with a wonderful co-worker on Sunday and we created such cute butterfly easel cards!! We decided to make them Mother’s Day themed. Wait till you see this little cutie…..

Look at that cute little flower hat pin! I had these little silver flower beads, so I took some of them and stained them with my alcohol ink in a green tone. I put a couple of coats on…..very subtle but very nice. We had a hard time finding just the right flower to match so I finally just took a couple of my flower punches and we just made them out of the same Designer Paper as the card was made from. I took my Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Vintage Photo and sponged over the flower to give it some depth. We then ‘painted’ on some Close To My Heart Glitz glitter gel in Bronze to the edges of the petals. We inked the edges of the butterfly wings with the Vintage Photo as well and then painted on the Glitz bronze glitter gel to the edges. The green lace bow came from a haul I’d come across at our local second hand store where someone had brought in a whole pile of this old stretch lace seam binding….cha ching!!!

This is a picture of the outside and the inside of the card. I received the template for this card from a super talented friend, Lauren, from over in Aussie land. If you have some time, you really need to go on over and check out her blog….Laurenscraft.

Here’s a pic of the completed card opened…..

There she is…..all ready to give to some wonderful, incredible Mother!!!

Thanks for stepping into my world to take a peek…..I do really appreciate it!

Hey there peeps…..I’m on a roll so thought, why quit now??!!! Here is a card I made for a challenge that I found out didn’t qualify, because it took me longer than 45 minutes to make it……lol. Over on the SCS site they have what they call a Virtual Stamp Night where anyone can get together on-line for a Friday evening and the following Saturday afternoon and early evening and make cards. There is a new card challenge posted every hour…..yup, that’s right….every hour and you’re given 45 minutes to complete the card. Now, in reality, if you’re not able to make it for the slotted in time of the Virtual Stamp Night you can still play along after the fact until Monday evening and still do all the challenges…..with the same expectation that your card only take you 45 minutes. HA! Okay, so I don’t know if I’ve EVER created a card in 45 minutes!! First, it must take me all of 45 minutes just to pick out what paper I want to use!! (and I will clarify though that the time you spend picking out the paper doesn’t count towards your 45 minutes to create your card…..thank goodness or I’d be sunk every time!!) But even taking that into consideration, I still can’t get it done!! I have to lay everything I picked out ono the card, arrange it, re-arrange it, decide I don’t like an embellishment, change a color up, start cutting everything out, stamp an image (s), distress an edge or two, ink up an edge or two, decide to then make an embellishment, re-arrange everything again….geesh!! I don’t know if I’m even capable of cranking out a card in 45 minutes!!! I have to give these ladies a lot of credit. They come to these Virtual Stamp Nights prepared with some Go-To card sketches they like to do that are quick and easy, they’ll have a bunch of images stamped and colored, they’ll have backgrounds already done up and ready to go, they’ll have their card bases all cut, scored and folded, ready to go. They’ll have embellishments handy to be used on any kind of card that may come up…..I tell you…..these are seasoned pro’s!! I was a rookie that wouldn’t even have made the farm team…..heck, the local rec team for that matter!!! But you know…..that’s all okay…..because I can still do all the card challenges if I want to…..I’ll just post them on my blog instead!!

So, this colorful little number was made using an embossed piece of cardstock with cupcakes on it…..don’t ask me what the name of it is cause I don’t remember. I got it when I hosted an embossed cardstock swap and I think it’s pretty darned cute! That little present was made using my Close To My Heart Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge and the matching stamps. I cut the main gift out of bright lime green and yellow striped cardstock and stamped the swirls onto it with the matching stamp for that gift cut out using my Tim Holtz distress ink in Concord Grape. The stamp is from the Celebration stamp set. I then traced the swirls with my glue pen and sprinkled some glitter onto the swirls. Next, what present is complete without a bow….so off to the Cricut again and cut out the matching bow for the gift. Inked the edges of the gift and the bow with the Concord Grape, pop dotted it onto the card and blinged it up!!

Have I mentioned how much I love my Close To My Heart Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge lately?? I mean, this thing comes with the cartridge, three stamp sets that co-ordinate with some of the cuts from the cartridge and three sets of Dimentional Elements (chipboard shapes, tags and banners) that also match some of the cuts from the cartridge. This little shape for the Happy Birthday! sentiment is one of those shapes included with the set. It gives you the dimensions on the packages so I was able to go to my cartridge and cut out the matching purple piece of cardstock to match the shape, glue it on, stamp it and ink the edges in no time at all! Added some bling and……….

…one finished birthday card for a cute little girl!

I have to give a shout out to two of my blogging friends who have pretty much taught me all I do on my blog. I really like the idea of posting some of the pictures of my cards in full size . Great idea Lisa and Lauren…..you should really go and check out their blogs if you have some time. There’s Lisa over at the Crafting Cottage and Lauren over at Laurenscraft. Amazingly talented ladies who have some beautiful creations on their blogs…..it will be well worth you time to check these ladies out.

Now, another post or leave the rest till tomorrow…..hmmm…..

Once again, I always appreciate it when you come by for a visit…..love to read your comments. Till next time!